Nominet UK - Election of non-executive directors 2007

Scope

Nominet should look carefully at areas of synergy such as UK ENUM.

Nominet was set up for the sole purpose of running the .uk ccTLD, however the skills and trust it has built up are ideal for operating in a number of areas of synergy. The most obvious and recently discussed one is UK ENUM which Nominet is now able to proceed with following changes at EGM2. I strongly support Nominet bidding for UK ENUM.

There may be other registry services both within telecommunications and elsewhere that arise which Nominet may be able to compete for. It is important that Nominet respects the business models of its members and tries to avoid intruding on these.

Board Structure

A modern board structure maintaining a balance of skills and with member involvement.

Nominet is currently running a consultation as part of the Governance Review process asking for comments on the composition of the board of directors. Specifically, it is proposing a change from 2 executive directors (CEO + Chairman) and 4 non-executive directors (two elected each year; two year term) to a board consisting of 3 executive directors (CEO + 2), 3 appointed non-executive directors (ratified by next general meeting) and 3 elected non-executive directors.

The concept of appointed non-executive directors is very important, to allow Nominet to bring in additional skills to the board. One of these would be the chairman of the company. Secondly, at least two executive directors would be advantageous to the board for obvious reasons.

The change from four elected non-executive directors (two year terms) to three elected (three year terms) does present a challenge in bringing to the board a representative range of views. This stems more from the number of simultaneously elected directors more so than the number in total. This needs further careful consideration with safeguards to ensure a sufficient range of perspectives within the board.

I fully support term limits for all non-executive directors totalling six years.

Member Participation & Interaction - A new strategy ?

Assign one person primary responsibility for member and stakeholder participation.

Nominet is often criticised for its choices in how to interact with members, perhaps too hastily. I have always found Nominet most willing to listen to feedback and they have made clear attempts to improve communications. I was pleased to, for example, see a simplification of the governance review into a 'mind map' diagram as an example of trying something new.

Over the last few years it has been encouraging this interaction by organising member meetings, rotating AGM venues around the country as well as re-vamping communication to be easier to understand. I hope these continue and new ideas are developed. The concept of an 'industry event' has been discussed but didn't go further--It would be useful to have a wide policy debate every six months on various issues not just within the PAB, but within the entire membership and any other interested stakeholders, similar to how other organisations organise meetings. This would be a good opportunity for members to socialise, and could be combined with the AGM partly.

Recently, ICANN appointed Kieren McCarthy, a former journalist who has written about various domain related issues in particular, to be "General Manager for Public Participation" to encourage more interaction with stakeholders. This was an interesting move and although it's yet too early to judge the success, I think Nominet might benefit from considering something similar to this.

This is not a replacement to a communications department within Nominet, but someone whose primary role is to try and get feedback both to specific consultations, and more generally anything related to Nominet (and even beyond in related areas). They would be able to do outreach work by targeting relevant meetings such as LINX, RIPE, UKNOF, etc. meetings for example. They should not be considered a spokesperson for Nominet, but a facilitator of interaction between stakeholders to increase awareness of the different viewpoints. This is not in any way to suggest senior Nominet staff should not continue to be accessible, something quite rare in companies of this size.

This role should be given the latitude to experiment with different methods, technologies, and ways of interacting to increase the interest in issues affecting Nominet, its members and the general Internet community at large with respect to domains and any other future Nominet business areas. They should in essence be at the core of "The Big Nominet Conversation".

Corporate Social Responsibility

Helping the UK Internet community

The idea of Nominet establishing a charitable trust or other vehicle to help fund projects related to Internet research and education has been floating around for some time and is highly desirable. Educating older people about how the Internet works, funding research on safer browsing for children and even contributing to the development of the Internet in third world countries are all possibilities members should consider.

Pricing Policy

Members should lead the way

Nominet is currently engaging in a governance review which includes questions about the limits the board has on varying registration and membership pricing. It is currently asking for your views on whether this should change. I believe that on a general level directors need to be able to run the company free of unreasonable restrictions in so much as there should be no micro-management of those you choose to delegate particular responsibility to. However, some members feel that Nominet is in a unique position and thus needs to have extra protections in place to secure the interests of its membership.

I believe that this is a fundamental question which the members need to decide (any other position would be pointless since it requires members to vote to approve) and I hope that more responses to this consultation will be forthcoming to give the board the right information with which to make proposals for any changes to the articles of the company.

Dispute Resolution Service (DRS)

The DRS consultation has now ended. This section discusses the wider issue.

Deposit before mediation; Loser pays appeals

There is a lot of concern from some communities over "loser pays" in DRS because their business model means they end up on the end of DRS challenges regularly. The DRS is an efficient out-of-court system (financially speaking) of getting domains however the £750 case fee and £3,000 appeal fee is still very significant and could prevent a legitimate appeal on a flawed decision.

I would suggest that the £750 fee should be paid prior to mediation and be fully refundable if mediation is successful (or both parties agree a judgement would not be in their common interests). If the mediation is unsuccessful, the respondent should have the opportunity to request a judgement which this fee will pay for. This will help avoid the small number of spurious cases some registrants are concerned about.

I would also like to see the £3,000 appeal fee being paid by the losing party (except where the appeal is of an original decision that decides to leave the domain with the existing registrant. This means that if a decision is made to transfer the domain to the complainant, and the registrant successfully appeals, they are not out of pocket (in such a case they are completely innocent according to an appeal ruling). The complainant has a choice before starting a DRS case, the respondent does not. The only situation where the respondent should pay is if they fail to win an appeal against such a decision.

To summarise:

The logic in the above is that the only time a domain registrant is required to pay a fee is when they unsuccessfully appeal a decision.

Domain Availability Checker (DAC)

This is not a a proposed policy - It is an idea I wanted to float
(if you've read this far, you're obviously interested in new ideas)

Provide a two-level DAC access which allows large registrars to use the service unfettered by restrictions needed to ensure a fair use of resources for dropcatching.

The DAC is a critical tool for two types of stakeholders, namely large registrars and dropcatchers in particular. The purpose of the DAC was to take the stress off from WHOIS and to remove the data mining problems by allowing the limits on WHOIS access to be lower. The DAC limits are set up in a way which means a large registrar could run into potential problems with frequent lookups during a busy time on its website, and it also prevents large registrars from offering dropcatching services since their lookups all go into simple domain lookups.

I think there's a simple solution of two levels of DAC access. I'll call these "gold" and "silver" to get across the principle. The "gold" requests are very time sensitive as used in the dropcatching business. "silver" requests on the other hand can be queued or delayed slightly.. a few seconds or even minutes is neither here nor there really as the requests aren't necessarily automated, and are not designed to catch domains about to expire. This would both maintain a fair playing field for dropcatching and allow larger registrars to run their businesses without paying close attention to the DAC limits as they may need to now.

There are a wide range of views on the 'dropcatching' and 'domaining' businesses ranging from their encouragement to prevention. The fact is there will always be a secondary market in any open domain space or derivatives (as in Wait List slots) and it is important to ensure this works in an equitable way with fair access to everyone.

Expanding on "My Vision" of Nominet in election statement

In my election statement I have outlined 'my vision' on various issues for Nominet going forward. This section explains the basis for my views on what isn't covered above.

Nominet is fundamentally a stable organisation with dedicated and highly skilled staff.

Nominet is financially in a very stable position with over £9.5m cash and a steadily increasing turnover ensuring it can be trusted to maintains its continuing operation without significant difficulties. This is very important, in particular considering the potential impact of any future legal action. Nominet has shown its responsibility in targeting such action against individuals and companies who abuse its systems including those who try and data-mine its WHOIS database in breach of the privacy and data protection principles.

The Nominet staff are among the friendliest and most co-operative I have encountered in the IT industry. You only have to call the switchboard and be greeted by a cheery voice on the other end of the line, even if the caller is furious about a problem (usually not of Nominet's causing). Visiting Nominet is similarly, always a pleasant experience. It is important that Nominet retains staff and culture.

 

It should remain a not-for-profit organisation supporting both small and large members

Ever since my organisation joined Nominet, we have been on a fair playing field with other Nominet members in offering domain registration services to registrants. This low barrier to entry does present some problems with companies starting to sell domains without an understanding of how they even work often, however this is best addressed through industry standards, maintaining an open membership where anyone serious about buying domains, or holding a stake in domain names, is able to join. It is similarly important, that Nominet doesn't develop systems for simply the group of members who request them most, but to take into consideration different requirements such as those from larger members and other groups (PRSS for rights holders, DAC for larger registrars and drop-catchers to keep load off WHOIS, web interfaces for small members, etc.)

I can also without reservation state that I believe Nominet should remain a not-for-profit organisation that is able to look after the interests of the .uk stakeholders, and not shareholders. I firmly believe this structure is to the benefit of every single Nominet member from the newest one to the largest, particularly in the long run.

 

Continuing encouragement of registrar-business model (domains registered via tagholders)

The 'Nominet model' is a three-way contract between the registrant, the registrar ("tagholder"), and Nominet. This provides both protection to the registrant in the event the registrar goes out of business or becomes impossible to deal with (as recent events have shown with respect to one ICANN accredited registrar, there needs to be safeguards.) and ensures an efficient and competitive market for .uk domains with different business models working together providing registration services for .uk domains.

 

Paperless Nominet - moving from paper-based to electronic communication where possible

As some members used to receive mountains of paper certificates, they now receive a similar number of Confirmation of Registration forms with specific passcodes for each domain registered. There are clear reasons why Nominet wishes to both ensure the address given on a registration is correct and to make contact with the registrant (considering it has a contract with them), but clearly sending 100 forms to an individual who has registered 100 domains is a waste of paper, energy and money.

 

Key focus and resources into finishing development of synchronous EPP interface and associated web-based systems (without decommissioning the automaton)

There has been a project under way for many years to transform the key Nominet interface with registrars (tag holders) from the e-mail based 'automaton' to a synchronous standards-based EPP protocol. There have been many hurdles to this including the need to restructure the database Nominet operates, however it is important to try and implement this as soon as possible. The new system should help provide registrants with a far better user experience in registering .uk names via registrars.

 

Electronic interfaces for transactions which are currently manual (e.g. transfers) with appropriate safeguards

Nominet has been very 'paper focused' in the past but increasingly this is falling out of line with other registries who are almost paperless. There are good reasons for paper forms in cases, but where possible (e.g. where the registrant is the tagholder and a PGP signed signature is available (although some safeguards may be required to make sure the key holder is authorised in this respect) fully electronic transactions should be possible (e.g. transfer of registrants). These should be used to reduce the cost of such transactions.

 

Evaluation of competitive position against other TLDs (1 to 10 year registrations, promotion of .uk, etc.)

The Board and the PAB is scheduled to review the current two-year registration periods. It has already been agreed that it should be possible to 'synchronise' registration periods with multiple domains, but there has been no decision as yet on 1-10 year registrations. Nominet may be in a unique position however it does need to take into consideration the market conditions within other TLDs which do offer for example registrations for anything from 1 to 10 years and there seems to demand for this.

 

Reduce operational costs using technology where appropriate to achieve efficiency savings

In addition to removing un-necessary paper, Nominet should try and provide as much support online. This includes technical support for tagholders, and information to all stakeholders. I should make it clear Nominet does a lot of this already, including providing access to the AGM remotely (although more online participation may be a possible improvement).